Christmas in Korea

I feel like I already talked about Christmas traditions in Korea, but it bears repeating so I'll say it again: It's very different.

As far as I can tell, it's a commercial holiday. (Even more so than at home ;p) Historically, it's not a Christian country, so they have no reason to cherish it the way we do. It's a holiday shipped over from the US, like many things here, with a romanticised spin thrown over it so that it's mostly about spending quality time with your other half. Think of it as December Valentine's Day. Or just...December Sales Day where everyone conveniently has the day off.

It's not a big family event where people from all over the place gather to eat a lot of food. They have Chuseok for that! If anything, couples might exchange gifts whilst on a cute date, or parents might give their child a gift but according to my co-teacher that's where the line is drawn. It's not a gift-heavy occasion and even then it's quite often just money.

Because of this, there's also a distinct lack of Christmas decorations to be found. Sure, a lot of the shops we go to and big stations we visit have a tree set up somewhere, and a lot of cafes have snowflake decals and wreaths up on the windows and walls. But I'm yet to see big strings of lights everywhere in shopping areas, and extravagant window-dressing like at home. I'm not sure if I'm sad or happy about this.

When Nick was talking to his students about Christmas and Christmas Songs, they touched on the topic of Christmas carols. As far as they were concerned, any old Christmas song from the 80's and 90s is a Christmas carol. Ah, yes, All I Want For Christmas Is You, that age-old traditional Christmas carol by Anon. Actually, I don't think I heard a single actual carol. Maybe Silent Night, but with a modern cover and with a very different vibe to the quiet, solemn piece you usually hear in the streets.

Then there's the fact we barely had a break for Christmas. December 25th, that's it. No more, no less. We were in school right up until Christmas Eve, and back in the classroom bright and early on Boxing Day. So it kind of didn't sink in that Christmas had come until I was lying in bed on the 25th wondering why I wasn't in school on a Thursday. Usually there's a lot of build-up. The traditional adverts start to pop up, decorations stretch as far as the eye can see, and you can usually see trees dressed and lovely in living room windows. Music pumps out of stores everywhere and people start to ask you about your plans for the holiday. Christmas food is all over the place, people are frantically buying gifts and wrapping paper, and everyone busts our their favourite hideous sweater. Even most work places tend to have decorations and I remember well all of the Christmas-themed activities we'd do in school every year for the last few weeks of term.

But there was none of that, and it was a little bit confusing and jarring, even for me, the self-proclaimed Scrooge.

The Saga of the Ovenless Officetel

You may or may not remember me lamenting, when I first moved into this apartment, the distinct lack of an oven. When I'm stressed, I bake, so what am I meant to do now? (The answer is avoid all other chores as usual, and sleep more.)

Anyway, since then I've been trying to find some alternatives to baking that will still produce cakes and other various confections that require an oven. Everyone else says to just buy one on GMarket, but even at the lowest quoted price of about 30,000 won, I don't want to spend all that for something I'll inevitably have to get rid of or leave behind when I leave Korea, not to mention the distinct lack of space we have for appliances.

So, my first adventure was with a banana bread recipe I found that uses a rice cooker. I've baked in a rice cooker before, back when I was big into Yakitate!! Japan and the manga provided a recipe for Azuma's suihanjapan, so I knew it was possible to bake actual bread with a thick crust, but what about a soft, spongey cake?

Turns out that's possible too! It'll take some work, considering baking products are either really hard to find here, or really expensive. In particular, butter and other dairy products aren't too cheap (which is why I'm not just making cheesecakes by the dozen) so the taste to me was a bit...off. It kind of tasted too healthy. I've got a lot of brown sugar now, though (I keep forgetting to cross it off my mental shopping list, so I keep buying more and more bags of the stuff. Oops.) which might help with making the flavour a bit richer. All in all, it was pretty successful.

Now, there's also some sort of weird contraption in the apartment that just looks like either a) a toy or b) a metal box of doom, but either way I was kind of scared by it and so naturally just shoved it into a cupboard and tried to forget about its existence.

But then I had a thought. What if it was an oven? Or a toaster oven? I wasn't sure what a toaster oven was or what it did (other than, presumably, toast things) but I looked for a recipe and lo, toaster oven cupcakes are a thing.

I gave it a dubious whirl, and actually wasn't too disappointed.

They came out patchy and uneven, despite my efforts to rotate the tray and rearrange the cupcakes to sit in certain hotspots, but apparently the hotspots move. Huff.

I tried some though, and they were great. The sugar on top had gone crispy and the improvised bit of lemon juice I'd thrown in didn't really come through as lemon but it did add something nice and sweet. I took the least burnt ones into school the next day and the other teachers in my office said they tasted good, and nobody got sick afterwards, so I can only class that as a success, haha.

And finally, while I know it's not a cake, it's good to know of some other sweets I can whip up if need be, and our lovely friend Rachel inadvertently gave me a great idea. As she was moving back Stateside, she was emptying cupboards and during this process offered us a bag of what looked like cakey doughnut balls. They're made by Shany and came with a promising warning from Rachel that they taste kind of weird, but not in a bad way.

In snack desperation a few days later, I cracked open the bag and started eating and found out that, yes, they do indeed taste "kind of weird, but not in a bad way". They actually tasted kind of familiar and I wasn't sure why. It wasn't just the stale texture. There was something about the flavour and the crispy topping that reminded me of...

Sponge fingers. If there's one thing I've learnt from my Nan and family dinners, it's that sponge-based desserts are delicious and easy to make. So I thought I'd take a risk and make a sort of improvised tiramisu. And what do you know, it worked! The balls of sponge actually made portioning easier than the usual finger-shaped slabs you get, and I've got enough ingredients left over to make at least one more batch.

So, all is not lost in this sad, ovenless life. But I'm going to keep experimenting until I can get myself some decent roast potatoes!

The Obligatory "Room Tour"

Two blog posts in one day? Crazy talk! Sorry about that though.
I said I'd give a little photo-tour of our officetel at some point, so while I was testing out my new phone I thought I'd combine the two.

Firstly, the living room:

Look at that giant window. Aw yeah. So really this place is pretty much open-plan. It makes 20-30sq.ft. feel that bit bigger. Every little bit of space gets used, so that wardrobe is pretty big, and each segment under the stairs is actually a cupboard.

There's two fairly confusing and intimidating things on the wall, one for the hot water and underfloor heating, and the other is our doorbell. It's meant to have a digital peephole for the front door, but it's seemingly broken except for the intercom, and occasionally the whole thing just decides to yell at us. I can only assume they're party political broadcasts, urgent news, and building maintenance updates.

There's also two big sofas (with throws on, for comfort, because nobody likes a sticky leather seat in 30C+ weather) and a table that I assume should be our dining table but instead gets used to hold most of the kitchen appliances.